It's moronic plot that could have been way better written if it was allowed to be anything other then unsubtle advertisements for Disney's bigger consumer brands
That Frozen Level was pointless. It's somehow worse then the Little Mermaid Lv in 2
The following badly written ideas clone characters, time travel, and reviving dead characters to make fantards happy. That's how you nuke your entire story.
Gamplay being hit and miss due to hand held limitations does not help. And scattering the series to different gaming devices including mobiles is stupid. Nomura either is an idiot or wants to kill the series by making it difficult to keep up with.
And they ran out of Classic and Renaissance Disney. Don't give me that Revival Era bullshit those movies are shit especially Frozen and I mean the movie not the adaptation used in Kingdom Hearts. Frozen is shit.
>especially Frozen and I mean the movie not the adaptation used in Kingdom Hearts. Frozen is shit.
If it makes you feel any better the kingdom hearts adaptation is even worse than the movie.
>Make Frozen a world >make WiR a summon
Elsa should have been a summon and WiR should have been a world. If they wanted references to Coded they set up already Wreck It Ralph would have been great for it. Hell, Cybug King Candy is final boss bait and practically looks like a Heartless form already.
Frozen not being a world would have caused a riot given how popular it was in the last month of 2013 and throughout 2014. WiR was nowhere near as successful as Frozen anyways.
Novelty is always a part of the appeal. Once you have more of something especially a strange cross-over concept like KH, the novelty wears off. It doesn't help that they keep bringing back characters like after they were interesting. I played KH3 and had to refight all these old villains again who did nothing in the main plot compared to their first appearance. Just these glorified cameos.
It's not dead. There's still plenty of money to be made like in many franchises far past their peak. But the magic is long gone.
KH2 is objectively the best in the series, and, genuinely, if they'd just kept refining that, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel every ten minutes, the entire series would've been better for it.
For me, everything after 1 not including its disparate elements together well enough. KH1 had an evil villain enclave that affected the stories of the worlds the MC visited which, even separate, made things feel somewhat connected. Final Fantasy characters were part of the OC bits of the game to fill out exposition roles. The actual OCs were few (Sora, Kairi, Riku, Ansem) and were involved with the other elements to various degrees. Sora befriending the Traverse Town crew, Riku being Maleficent's lackey, Kairi literally being one of the Princess McGuffins for the story, Ansem being responsible for not only the FF characters losing their home but also leading Maleficent on by the nose to roll everything forwards.
Everything after 1 it feels like the Disney parts are obligations the crew has to make, but don't need to have any effect on the actual characters or plot. Maleficent is boiled down to irrelevant filler wandering around the background, the FF characters are replaced by the series real OCs that populate the already bloated cast more and more.
And that just makes more OCs being pushed as relevant and important, but honestly I don't give a frick about 90% of them. The Union X bullshit, the Master of Masters? Who gives a frick. It's just extending a series that really should have only had 3-4 games and ended.
Chain of Memories was unironically a huge mistake because it was mostly an OC dump where the Disney worlds and even the FF characters that were friends with Sora were ALL unimportant. And all it did was make something to justify Sora being reset to 0 for KH2 and hint at that weird blond kid fighting Riku in that secret KH1 cutscene.
I'll give some credit that at least COM had bite, kid me vividly remembered Vexen and Zexion getting murdered in cold blood.
CoM was a cheap cash grab when I was a kid, or at least that was my opinion of it at the time, but was still fun despite being a rehash of kh1. Unfortunately, it started the whole bullshit of org 13. If that trash had ended with kh2 and went into kh3 with xehanort is back as a full person with his nobody and heartless powers vs disney villains with Sora caught between, I could deal.
Yeah I would have been fine with that too. It can even work with BBS given the KH2 secret cutscene as explaining Xehanort a little more and the Org 13 backstory rolls okay into the introduced narrative and could tie cohesively. At least it wouldn't have the hellish plot snarl of fricking time travel nonsense.
Then Nomura revived those OCs from Chain of Memories who died there. Bringing back characters like that damages the weight of a conflict.
And really hate Namine for damaging Sora's mind. Kingdom Hearts would be so much better if Sora chose to not trust Namine and went on a quest to restore his old memories because after Namine "fixes" him Sora is left as a hopeless idiot.
>And really hate Namine for damaging Sora's mind
I'm entirely convinced she fricked him up bad because KH1/COM Sora isn't like his future iterations at all.
Exactly Sora in the first game and in the middle of Chain of Memories is a rather normal character who has a bit of common sense. He questions when things are weird. But from Kingdom Hearts 2 and onward Sora is simply a fool who never learns.
Yeah I would have been fine with that too. It can even work with BBS given the KH2 secret cutscene as explaining Xehanort a little more and the Org 13 backstory rolls okay into the introduced narrative and could tie cohesively. At least it wouldn't have the hellish plot snarl of fricking time travel nonsense.
[...] >And really hate Namine for damaging Sora's mind
I'm entirely convinced she fricked him up bad because KH1/COM Sora isn't like his future iterations at all.
BBS or just something to explain the latest power reset before 3, only 1 interquel game though, and do fricking 3 quickly with a cheap follow up to set up 4.
Then Nomura revived those OCs from Chain of Memories who died there. Bringing back characters like that damages the weight of a conflict.
And really hate Namine for damaging Sora's mind. Kingdom Hearts would be so much better if Sora chose to not trust Namine and went on a quest to restore his old memories because after Namine "fixes" him Sora is left as a hopeless idiot.
>Then Nomura revived those OCs from Chain of Memories who died there. Bringing back characters like that damages the weight of a conflict.
This is the one major mistake I think was made. Once Org XIII was done, they should have been done. Yes, even Axel. Them Disappearing were some of the more sobering moments in the series. WORST case scenario, a game should have been dedicated to going after the heartless that contained Org XIII's hearts so that their recompletion wasn't such a hand-wave. And they shouldn't have had their powers/weapons without being Nobodies.
Like, I buy it. But he shouldn't have his fire powers until he gets his keyblade.
1 month ago
Anonymous
"Master" my ass, he was such a fricking loser!The second he stops using his chakrams he jobbed constantly. Meanwhile in DDD he swaggers into the hornet's nest with all the Xehanorts there, uses his chakrams to block attacks that would have mogged him if he was using a keyblade, and managed to get the frick out without eating shit once.
1 month ago
Anonymous
The whole final confrontation was a massive disappointment.
>And that just makes more OCs being pushed as relevant and important, but honestly I don't give a frick about 90% of them. The Union X bullshit, the Master of Masters? Who gives a frick. It's just extending a series that really should have only had 3-4 games and ended.
Fricking this. I was extremely shocked people were simping for fricking Ava and the stalker sister in a shitty mobile game. And khgays had the audacity to say you aren't a real fan of you haven't played it with it's shit story >BBS first shows impact of keyblade war with huge craters and destroyed mountains in keyblade graveyard >Khux shows it's just pathetic swinging shit flash animated tweened toothpicks for arms and just fading into hearts
Fricking pathetic
They went full moron in KH2 by wanting to have two "main" villains for every half of the game instead of picking a side, AKA everything with Pete and Maleficent is filler trash, and the deviantart organization had barely any presence because of it, last world is just Sora killing 3 of them in a row lmao
the plot is bad and the big "payoff" in 3 was a wet fart that felt more interested in setting up the sequel than concluding the saga you actually gave a shit about
Xehanort didn't deserve that ending period. It's insane that the man who caused so much misery, pain, and destruction got an attempt at narrative sympathy because he was just 'too extreme' at what he was trying to do.
The fact that the third numbered game, which was marketed as the end of an epic saga, is more preoccupied with setting up sequels derived from mobile game lore and Nomura's spite over not being able to make Final Fantasy 13 than delivering a satisfying payoff.
Additionally there's zero catharsis when the supposed hero suffers more consequences at the end from saving everyone than the villian, who is now retconned into being a well intentioned extremist good boi that dindu nuffin.
Also KH3 is mostly filler and in a bad way. Apologists will claim the other games have filler as well but no other entry in the franchise has a character literally say "Why are we in this world", nor is any other entry centered around regaining a special plot power only to be told "The power was inside you all along and also it's bad and you shouldn't use it"
The core premise of Disney meets FF has been tossed out so base game KH3 doesn't really have ANY FF characters in it and it's all OC mobile game trash instead. All the FF stuff, much like any of the GOOD OC stuff, was shunted off into the DLC. (As were franchise mainstays like Oblivion and Oathkeeper). Also, hope you didn't want a third Sephiroth fight. Enjoy Not!Noctis instead!
The Vs XIII thing is so obvious, Nomura's spite is gleaming from KH. And I think he might be trying to squeeze more elements of TWEWY into the KH mythos given the location of 'Quadratum'.
>comic and cartoons
anyways Id say somewhere around Birth by sleep. though you could make an argument of it peaking with 1 to begin with.
Its absolutely moronic always, but 1 knew what it was. chains through 358/2 kept up with at least interesting imagery and schlocky but cool intrigue. BBS is when it went pants on head to a a moronic degree.
tldr rule of thumb: >stuff just around heartless
fine >stuff around heartless and nobodies
eh, ok, can Kinda see it >Unversed and ream eaters
moron levels far surpass fun levels.
No new games.
People complained about all the handheld titles but just look at what happens without them. They were keeping the franchise alive between mainline entries. KH4 is gonna take as long to make as KH3 at this point.
I hate that Sony and Nintendo both killed off their handhelds. And no the Switch doesn't count. Give me a 4DS.
Doesn't count.
BBS/DDD, for all their faults, were proper video games that tried their best to capture the mainline feel while having their own gimmicks. I would take another one of those games (they could even recycle KH1/KH2's assets yet again if they want) over the nothing we're getting now.
Original gacha ended 2 years ago, but a new one is releasing this year apparently. As for 4, it's rumored that it's still in development. Rhythm game was the literal definition of a Filler story/ retreading the story for a quick cash grab.
NTA but if the guy in charge is Nomura then I think the problem is that his priorities shifted. Hell, if you get the special collector's artbook it has a forward written by him where he flat out admits that people will probably hate hate KH3's ending.
The fact that the third numbered game, which was marketed as the end of an epic saga, is more preoccupied with setting up sequels derived from mobile game lore and Nomura's spite over not being able to make Final Fantasy 13 than delivering a satisfying payoff.
Additionally there's zero catharsis when the supposed hero suffers more consequences at the end from saving everyone than the villian, who is now retconned into being a well intentioned extremist good boi that dindu nuffin.
Also KH3 is mostly filler and in a bad way. Apologists will claim the other games have filler as well but no other entry in the franchise has a character literally say "Why are we in this world", nor is any other entry centered around regaining a special plot power only to be told "The power was inside you all along and also it's bad and you shouldn't use it"
The core premise of Disney meets FF has been tossed out so base game KH3 doesn't really have ANY FF characters in it and it's all OC mobile game trash instead. All the FF stuff, much like any of the GOOD OC stuff, was shunted off into the DLC. (As were franchise mainstays like Oblivion and Oathkeeper). Also, hope you didn't want a third Sephiroth fight. Enjoy Not!Noctis instead!
We honestly didn't need a third Sephiroth fight, the KH2 fight already felt redundant and was basically an ad for Advent Children.
I would have loved a fight with some other FF character though. The lack of FF content in general was a shame. Re:MIND had to stuff all the characters in one room just to ReMIND you they existed.
>We honestly didn't need a third Sephiroth fight, the KH2 fight already felt redundant and was basically an ad for Advent Children.
I think we did (and it's not like they couldn't use the ad for remake) because there was a setup of Tifa trying to find Cloud and Sephiroth being responsible for the KH version of Zack dying. There were unresolved plot hooks that could've gotten a follow through
Dissidia was a fighting game where you fight in various arenas, wasn't it? I wanted something where you could actually travel through worlds and have rpg adventures.
Sorta. It's definitely a grindy arena fighter, but Duodecim especially has an extensive story. Then Opera Omnia kind of did something similar with a lot more characters (it was a SaaS game that ended so you can't play it now, but someone posted all the cutscenes and cutscene-related gameplay on YouTube).
Idea. He has 6 preset keyblades but if you use one he has set it is replaced by default keyblade. This lets you remove one of his special attacks since each one is tied to a particular keyblade. So like if his AoE attack is super annoying you can watch which keyblade glows when he uses it, then you can use it to take it out of his attack pattern.
I also played FF7 Rebirth and thought the Gilgamesh fight was peak. Ideally a KH Gilgamesh fight would have him using parody keyblades. I can only think of two >Oathbreaker >Oblivifun
I'd be funny if his subplot was about trying to imitate how a keyblade master fights, and his AI parodied high level play from 2 on >Spams reflect >Glides everywhere >Waits for you to attack
What keyblade would you get for beating him? Excalibur? Excalipoor?
FF is generally confined to the OC worlds and often twisted into things vastly different from their original counterparts. Like throwing Yuffie into a Rikku outfit, all the teen/tween variant characters or the X-2 fairies, not to mention all the nonsense about Sephiroth being the dark part of Cloud's heart.
FF was always a crutch to lure in teenage weebs too good to play a Disney game. The OC stuff made them less necessary.
Square slipping FF shit into KH is what got me to try Final Fantasy games and I ended up really liking the ones I played first (FFI and FFXII, both fairly available at the time I looked into the games and both fun). Nomura really doesn't even scratch the surface of FF for representation, its all just showcasing projects he was part of, something I thought was lame the older I got.
I guarantee if Vs XIII didn't fall through Noctis would have been front and center as a FF representative in KH3 with Ardyn being the secret fight.
He's said before that he doesn't feel comfortable using other artist's characters, particularly without their permission. It's a weird Japanese thing, Sakurai does it too. I dunno what happened with XIII characters, since neither Lightning nor any of the Type-0 characters have showed up in KH, either. The XIII crew would have been natural additions to Twilight Town or something.
I'm still getting 4, despite 3 being kind of bad. Never been into something extremely nerdy like Final Fantasy, but at least with Kingdom Hearts the characters have arcs.
>Never been into something extremely nerdy like Final Fantasy, but at least with Kingdom Hearts the characters have arcs.
The sheer ignorance of the latter half of this statement showcases the legitimately of the first half.
The autistic morons that began pushing the mc as if it was the ultimate shit. I remember them starting all those "sora is better than x character from franchaise that KH visit, just because we see him in KH do things"
KH1 is the only time Kairi had anything resembling a character and she was in a coma for 75% of the game. It was also the only game I believed Sora, Kairi, and Riku were actually close. The ending was so kino, you can tell KH3 tried capturing the same feeling but it bungled it.
Nah, KH2 had it too, especially at the end. Kairi was still rambunctious; 2 was the source of people wanting to play as her thanks to that keyblade scene. And Session is basically the apex of the Sora/Riku broship, to the point that they did it again in 3D.
I'd have played BBS but I couldn't afford a PSP at the time. I bought a 3DS specifically to play 3D. >didn't even know DDD existed
I believe it but I also don't understand how that can happen.
The delays and plot. The games after KH2 were generally good but only die-hards engaged with them. Also the plot got a lot dumber by KH 3D. Suddenly we had time-traveling clone ghosts that possessed people. It didn't help that KH3 was underwhelming as hell with a poor selection of worlds.
Unbelievably bad pacing in 3, absolutely no stakes at all (revivals), plot occurring backwards in time (mobile games), no payoff at the end of 3/sequel bait, Sora becoming moronic and having no agency in the plot.
Also fans are too old and square enix is a walking corpse. Haven't connected with young people at all, KH2 and FFX are their last great games and that was 20 years ago
Toy Box>The Caribbean>Kingdom of Corona>Monstropolis>San Fransokyo>>>>100 Acre Wood
Might be a bit biased against San Fransokyo cause I didn't like that movie so maybe swap that with Arendelle to be fair
>Arendelle not at the bottom
Main good thing of that level was the kickass final boss
I'm a Poohgay so the Pooh world was a shocking disappointment for me. There is no way they were proud of releasing that shit in the state they did. 25 minutes of copy pasted mini games. Yeah Arendelle was terrible but for me it was way better than Pooh
The biggest problem is that they didn't have a colosseum in Olympus and instead did those shitty battle gates spread around. Seriously they have it in KH1 then in the Underworld in KH2 but not on fricking Olympus? Would have been the perfect opportunity to have had Safer Sephiroth
The third game ending with 'lol we forgif u' after a dozen games setting up that the main villain was an irredeemable monster who literally genocided entire worlds into non-existence. I don't know a single person who was remotely happy with that ending, and most people felt like it was an active insult after everything that happened.
That, and just throwing out all the Square characters, until the DLC dealt with some of them. in a half-assed way. Most of the games up until that point felt like Nomura's vision was the main starting point, but 3 felt like a game designed by committee.
>I don't know a single person who was remotely happy with that ending, and most people felt like it was an active insult after everything that happened.
I got banned from /vg/ for saying this (it was considered "trolling") so unfortunately there are xehanort apologists.
>KH3 didn't have pic related in it. >Kairi was teased to have a major role, or really any role, but ends up doing nothing but still given a secret boss battle where she's actually really fun to play >Org XIII still exists despite being defeated and now have new backstories and names >The Disney Villain group disbanded so now it's just Pete and Maleficent looking for a random box instead of Hades, Mother Gothel, Davy Jones, Randall, Zurg/Sid, Callaghan/Yokai, and Prince Hans scheming to steal more princesses or whatever >Dark Aqua >Xehanort just fricks off because his old master friend or something but one of the Org members is now the big bad? >Olympus had Phil being completely silent instead of just giving him a simple text box like the first game >a new third theme song you waited 10+ years for was ruined by skrillex >got rid of the cool stained glass princess designs to replace for his OCs
Zack being incorporated in BBS made me hope that we'd see more incorporated FF characters not restricted to the OC worlds like Traverse Town and Radiant Garden. I was a bit let down by the decision to not have any more FF cameos, and worse see parts of the fan community denigrate the people who were upset about that decision in the first place.
In FF7 Rebirth, Gilgamesh has the typical Excalibur/Excalipoor mixup, but he has a move called Sloppy Swordplay that does an unblockable 2000 damage that's represented by two thousand 1s, so he actually learned how to make Excalipoor work.
That game did him so much justice it's unreal. He's a buffoon, but an actual threat that can frick you up just like in FF5.
?si=f5-gfT0XbOKFJmo4 >FF7 battle theme is incorporated into Battle on the Big Bridge
Every FF from now on should have its battle theme in his boss music whenever he appears.
I always thought that Nomura's pro Tifa bias was so obvious when he made Aerith a nothing character and had all of Tifa's cutscenes be about wanting to find Cloud
If there's one area where Kingdom Hearts disappoints it's giantess art. You'd think that due to the Cinderella giantess scene it would inspire more giantess art in general for Kingdom Hearts but nah. Avatar from Nickelodeon has more giantess art go figure.
In Birth by Sleep during Cinderella's world with Ventus he is shrunken down because he entered Cinderella's world by landing on a mouse trap. And for what it's worth Aqua also got shrunken down in Cinderella's world but that one was the Fairy Godmother's magic.
I truly think Nomura has a giantess fetish. Why would he invent the idea that if Sora, Riku, etc go into a world and enter it through a small entry point they end up shrunken down? That's so detailed and specific.
That's the strange thing about Cinderella's world in Birth by Sleep. Of the playable characters who shrunk in there, Aqua gets shrunk by the Fairy Godmother's magic to sneak inside the house of the evil stepmother. But Ventus simply entered the world through a mouse hole into a mouse cage which forced the world itself to shrink him.
Thought I was alone in hating Roxas. And I hate how "inexplicably" super strong he is. He has two keyblades despite only having one heart. And yeah he's inexplicably super strong. Of all boss fights Roxas is the only mandatory boss who has the strongest defense. And when you play as him in KH3 he is TOO powerful. For being half of Sora he is too strong.
Thought I was alone in hating Roxas. And I hate how "inexplicably" super strong he is. He has two keyblades despite only having one heart. And yeah he's inexplicably super strong. Of all boss fights Roxas is the only mandatory boss who has the strongest defense. And when you play as him in KH3 he is TOO powerful. For being half of Sora he is too strong.
The Ventus part is important, he's basically 1/n of the Galactus of the KH universe (having been one of a handful of characters who survived the end of the previous one). Some Noah-type shit.
KH1 is the most pure story experience as a stand-alone game
KH2 Final Mix is the best game to actually play and the story still isn’t too convoluted by this point. If the series ended here with these two + CoM, it would have been fine.
Everything else, including 3, just kind of exists and just seems to constantly try and reinvent a wheel with needless gimmicks and story padding, instead of just doing the simple story charm of 1 with the gameplay of 2.
And this kind of applies to every big AAA game franchise and not just Kingdom Hearts, but video games take way too long to make now. There were three years between KH1 and 2. There was fourteen years between 2 and 3, and even 5 years since the remake of 2 to 3. Its now 5 years since 3 and 4 is not coming out this year.
It’s going to be harder to keep the buzz going longterm in games when an entire generation passes by between main entries.
Every numbered entry is a stopping point. You, as an individual player, can choose to ignore everything after 1, 2, or 3, and you'll have a complete story and a satisfying gameplay experience. If you move past a number, though, you have to get to the next one to have ANY semblance of closure.
>The death of handhelds and rise of mobile gaming meaning fans couldn't be tided over with spin-offs you can pick up and finish in a couple sittings, instead you have to deal shitty Gacha slop where important story beats are dragged out across years. >Disney getting in the way of Nomura's vision after they realized how sucessful Kingdom Hearts was. Hence why 3 felt the most lacking in films+OC cohesion. >Modern Square Enix just sucks in general.
lack of oswald
Blame Disney.
Wonder if he will show up in KH4 or beyond. The whole thing they are doing with that would make it super easy to implement him
Correction, it was Lee Harvey Oswald who was doing Walt a Favor for killing Kennedy.
It's moronic plot that could have been way better written if it was allowed to be anything other then unsubtle advertisements for Disney's bigger consumer brands
That Frozen Level was pointless. It's somehow worse then the Little Mermaid Lv in 2
The following badly written ideas clone characters, time travel, and reviving dead characters to make fantards happy. That's how you nuke your entire story.
Gamplay being hit and miss due to hand held limitations does not help. And scattering the series to different gaming devices including mobiles is stupid. Nomura either is an idiot or wants to kill the series by making it difficult to keep up with.
And they ran out of Classic and Renaissance Disney. Don't give me that Revival Era bullshit those movies are shit especially Frozen and I mean the movie not the adaptation used in Kingdom Hearts. Frozen is shit.
>Don't give me that Revival Era bullshit those movies are shit especially Frozen
frick you too bitter boomer
He's right
nah
They refuse to put in Three Caballeros
I want Wish, Encanto, Enchanted, a legit 101 Dalmatians level, Pocahontas and Emperor's New Groove in KH.
>especially Frozen and I mean the movie not the adaptation used in Kingdom Hearts. Frozen is shit.
If it makes you feel any better the kingdom hearts adaptation is even worse than the movie.
>Make Frozen a world
>make WiR a summon
Elsa should have been a summon and WiR should have been a world. If they wanted references to Coded they set up already Wreck It Ralph would have been great for it. Hell, Cybug King Candy is final boss bait and practically looks like a Heartless form already.
Frozen not being a world would have caused a riot given how popular it was in the last month of 2013 and throughout 2014. WiR was nowhere near as successful as Frozen anyways.
3 did really well
I guess the writing is impenetrable and laughably bad and the gameplay is not a selling point even if it's extremely fun
not releasing any information on 4 in 2 years s they can shit on ffvii with the demake
Novelty is always a part of the appeal. Once you have more of something especially a strange cross-over concept like KH, the novelty wears off. It doesn't help that they keep bringing back characters like after they were interesting. I played KH3 and had to refight all these old villains again who did nothing in the main plot compared to their first appearance. Just these glorified cameos.
It's not dead. There's still plenty of money to be made like in many franchises far past their peak. But the magic is long gone.
Being dogshit. The fact that they made a second one, let alone more, shows how utterly low the standards of Didney and Squenix fans truly are.
Which means zelda is the same because they made more than one of that failed series too?
Everything after the first game.
>Everything after the 2nd game
Ftfy
Com is ludo kino
KH2 is objectively the best in the series, and, genuinely, if they'd just kept refining that, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel every ten minutes, the entire series would've been better for it.
>kh2 is the best in the series
No the story is shit and its just spam x and triangle
t. Never played on critical
Wow just like every other game
For me, everything after 1 not including its disparate elements together well enough. KH1 had an evil villain enclave that affected the stories of the worlds the MC visited which, even separate, made things feel somewhat connected. Final Fantasy characters were part of the OC bits of the game to fill out exposition roles. The actual OCs were few (Sora, Kairi, Riku, Ansem) and were involved with the other elements to various degrees. Sora befriending the Traverse Town crew, Riku being Maleficent's lackey, Kairi literally being one of the Princess McGuffins for the story, Ansem being responsible for not only the FF characters losing their home but also leading Maleficent on by the nose to roll everything forwards.
Everything after 1 it feels like the Disney parts are obligations the crew has to make, but don't need to have any effect on the actual characters or plot. Maleficent is boiled down to irrelevant filler wandering around the background, the FF characters are replaced by the series real OCs that populate the already bloated cast more and more.
And that just makes more OCs being pushed as relevant and important, but honestly I don't give a frick about 90% of them. The Union X bullshit, the Master of Masters? Who gives a frick. It's just extending a series that really should have only had 3-4 games and ended.
Thought I was alone in hating most of the Kingdom Hearts OCs. Only like Sora and Riku. And the rest are bloating up the cast.
Chain of Memories was unironically a huge mistake because it was mostly an OC dump where the Disney worlds and even the FF characters that were friends with Sora were ALL unimportant. And all it did was make something to justify Sora being reset to 0 for KH2 and hint at that weird blond kid fighting Riku in that secret KH1 cutscene.
I'll give some credit that at least COM had bite, kid me vividly remembered Vexen and Zexion getting murdered in cold blood.
CoM was a cheap cash grab when I was a kid, or at least that was my opinion of it at the time, but was still fun despite being a rehash of kh1. Unfortunately, it started the whole bullshit of org 13. If that trash had ended with kh2 and went into kh3 with xehanort is back as a full person with his nobody and heartless powers vs disney villains with Sora caught between, I could deal.
Yeah I would have been fine with that too. It can even work with BBS given the KH2 secret cutscene as explaining Xehanort a little more and the Org 13 backstory rolls okay into the introduced narrative and could tie cohesively. At least it wouldn't have the hellish plot snarl of fricking time travel nonsense.
>And really hate Namine for damaging Sora's mind
I'm entirely convinced she fricked him up bad because KH1/COM Sora isn't like his future iterations at all.
Exactly Sora in the first game and in the middle of Chain of Memories is a rather normal character who has a bit of common sense. He questions when things are weird. But from Kingdom Hearts 2 and onward Sora is simply a fool who never learns.
BBS or just something to explain the latest power reset before 3, only 1 interquel game though, and do fricking 3 quickly with a cheap follow up to set up 4.
Then Nomura revived those OCs from Chain of Memories who died there. Bringing back characters like that damages the weight of a conflict.
And really hate Namine for damaging Sora's mind. Kingdom Hearts would be so much better if Sora chose to not trust Namine and went on a quest to restore his old memories because after Namine "fixes" him Sora is left as a hopeless idiot.
>Then Nomura revived those OCs from Chain of Memories who died there. Bringing back characters like that damages the weight of a conflict.
This is the one major mistake I think was made. Once Org XIII was done, they should have been done. Yes, even Axel. Them Disappearing were some of the more sobering moments in the series. WORST case scenario, a game should have been dedicated to going after the heartless that contained Org XIII's hearts so that their recompletion wasn't such a hand-wave. And they shouldn't have had their powers/weapons without being Nobodies.
And Axel became a keyblade master anyway.
Like, I buy it. But he shouldn't have his fire powers until he gets his keyblade.
"Master" my ass, he was such a fricking loser!The second he stops using his chakrams he jobbed constantly. Meanwhile in DDD he swaggers into the hornet's nest with all the Xehanorts there, uses his chakrams to block attacks that would have mogged him if he was using a keyblade, and managed to get the frick out without eating shit once.
The whole final confrontation was a massive disappointment.
>And that just makes more OCs being pushed as relevant and important, but honestly I don't give a frick about 90% of them. The Union X bullshit, the Master of Masters? Who gives a frick. It's just extending a series that really should have only had 3-4 games and ended.
Fricking this. I was extremely shocked people were simping for fricking Ava and the stalker sister in a shitty mobile game. And khgays had the audacity to say you aren't a real fan of you haven't played it with it's shit story
>BBS first shows impact of keyblade war with huge craters and destroyed mountains in keyblade graveyard
>Khux shows it's just pathetic swinging shit flash animated tweened toothpicks for arms and just fading into hearts
Fricking pathetic
They went full moron in KH2 by wanting to have two "main" villains for every half of the game instead of picking a side, AKA everything with Pete and Maleficent is filler trash, and the deviantart organization had barely any presence because of it, last world is just Sora killing 3 of them in a row lmao
the plot is bad and the big "payoff" in 3 was a wet fart that felt more interested in setting up the sequel than concluding the saga you actually gave a shit about
Xehanort didn't deserve that ending period. It's insane that the man who caused so much misery, pain, and destruction got an attempt at narrative sympathy because he was just 'too extreme' at what he was trying to do.
The Vs XIII thing is so obvious, Nomura's spite is gleaming from KH. And I think he might be trying to squeeze more elements of TWEWY into the KH mythos given the location of 'Quadratum'.
>comic and cartoons
anyways Id say somewhere around Birth by sleep. though you could make an argument of it peaking with 1 to begin with.
Its absolutely moronic always, but 1 knew what it was. chains through 358/2 kept up with at least interesting imagery and schlocky but cool intrigue. BBS is when it went pants on head to a a moronic degree.
tldr rule of thumb:
>stuff just around heartless
fine
>stuff around heartless and nobodies
eh, ok, can Kinda see it
>Unversed and ream eaters
moron levels far surpass fun levels.
No new games.
People complained about all the handheld titles but just look at what happens without them. They were keeping the franchise alive between mainline entries. KH4 is gonna take as long to make as KH3 at this point.
I hate that Sony and Nintendo both killed off their handhelds. And no the Switch doesn't count. Give me a 4DS.
What about the Rhythm game and also is the gacha trash mobile game still going?
Doesn't count.
BBS/DDD, for all their faults, were proper video games that tried their best to capture the mainline feel while having their own gimmicks. I would take another one of those games (they could even recycle KH1/KH2's assets yet again if they want) over the nothing we're getting now.
Original gacha ended 2 years ago, but a new one is releasing this year apparently. As for 4, it's rumored that it's still in development. Rhythm game was the literal definition of a Filler story/ retreading the story for a quick cash grab.
Wasn't part of the problem that there were so many side games that the guy in charge didn't realize it had been way too long since 2 came out?
NTA but if the guy in charge is Nomura then I think the problem is that his priorities shifted. Hell, if you get the special collector's artbook it has a forward written by him where he flat out admits that people will probably hate hate KH3's ending.
The fact that the third numbered game, which was marketed as the end of an epic saga, is more preoccupied with setting up sequels derived from mobile game lore and Nomura's spite over not being able to make Final Fantasy 13 than delivering a satisfying payoff.
Additionally there's zero catharsis when the supposed hero suffers more consequences at the end from saving everyone than the villian, who is now retconned into being a well intentioned extremist good boi that dindu nuffin.
Also KH3 is mostly filler and in a bad way. Apologists will claim the other games have filler as well but no other entry in the franchise has a character literally say "Why are we in this world", nor is any other entry centered around regaining a special plot power only to be told "The power was inside you all along and also it's bad and you shouldn't use it"
The core premise of Disney meets FF has been tossed out so base game KH3 doesn't really have ANY FF characters in it and it's all OC mobile game trash instead. All the FF stuff, much like any of the GOOD OC stuff, was shunted off into the DLC. (As were franchise mainstays like Oblivion and Oathkeeper). Also, hope you didn't want a third Sephiroth fight. Enjoy Not!Noctis instead!
We honestly didn't need a third Sephiroth fight, the KH2 fight already felt redundant and was basically an ad for Advent Children.
I would have loved a fight with some other FF character though. The lack of FF content in general was a shame. Re:MIND had to stuff all the characters in one room just to ReMIND you they existed.
>We honestly didn't need a third Sephiroth fight, the KH2 fight already felt redundant and was basically an ad for Advent Children.
I think we did (and it's not like they couldn't use the ad for remake) because there was a setup of Tifa trying to find Cloud and Sephiroth being responsible for the KH version of Zack dying. There were unresolved plot hooks that could've gotten a follow through
Wasn't Sephiroth a darkness thing in the game?
everything is darkness, even light
They say shit, but they constantly contradict said dialogue with Sephiroth affecting multiple people. Is Tifa Cloud's light then?
Fighting Sin could've been fun. Or frick, Kefka would've been great. Or Cloud of FRICKING DARKNESS why the hell did no one think of including her?
She's too sexy and Disney would complain because Disney must attack the male gaze.
You're describing Dissidia.
Dissidia was a fighting game where you fight in various arenas, wasn't it? I wanted something where you could actually travel through worlds and have rpg adventures.
Sorta. It's definitely a grindy arena fighter, but Duodecim especially has an extensive story. Then Opera Omnia kind of did something similar with a lot more characters (it was a SaaS game that ended so you can't play it now, but someone posted all the cutscenes and cutscene-related gameplay on YouTube).
Dissidia was fun, shame Square fricked themselves with NX instead of just porting Duodecim with online support.
>"I WILL have that Keyblade!"
Idea. He has 6 preset keyblades but if you use one he has set it is replaced by default keyblade. This lets you remove one of his special attacks since each one is tied to a particular keyblade. So like if his AoE attack is super annoying you can watch which keyblade glows when he uses it, then you can use it to take it out of his attack pattern.
Sick. It needs to happen.
I also played FF7 Rebirth and thought the Gilgamesh fight was peak. Ideally a KH Gilgamesh fight would have him using parody keyblades. I can only think of two
>Oathbreaker
>Oblivifun
I'd be funny if his subplot was about trying to imitate how a keyblade master fights, and his AI parodied high level play from 2 on
>Spams reflect
>Glides everywhere
>Waits for you to attack
What keyblade would you get for beating him? Excalibur? Excalipoor?
FF was always a crutch to lure in teenage weebs too good to play a Disney game. The OC stuff made them less necessary.
You say that as if the Disney stuff is at all relevant.
Well, it was at first.
The combination of the two is what made KH work. Framing just the FF stuff as a crutch is kinda bullshit IMO.
FF is generally confined to the OC worlds and often twisted into things vastly different from their original counterparts. Like throwing Yuffie into a Rikku outfit, all the teen/tween variant characters or the X-2 fairies, not to mention all the nonsense about Sephiroth being the dark part of Cloud's heart.
Square slipping FF shit into KH is what got me to try Final Fantasy games and I ended up really liking the ones I played first (FFI and FFXII, both fairly available at the time I looked into the games and both fun). Nomura really doesn't even scratch the surface of FF for representation, its all just showcasing projects he was part of, something I thought was lame the older I got.
I guarantee if Vs XIII didn't fall through Noctis would have been front and center as a FF representative in KH3 with Ardyn being the secret fight.
>I guarantee if Vs XIII didn't fall through Noctis would have been front and center as a FF representative in KH3
Who do you think Yozora is, anon?
Technically, either Nomura or Zack/Cody (one of those), depending on how you look at it.
>Then, I was told to "Save Sora."
He's said before that he doesn't feel comfortable using other artist's characters, particularly without their permission. It's a weird Japanese thing, Sakurai does it too. I dunno what happened with XIII characters, since neither Lightning nor any of the Type-0 characters have showed up in KH, either. The XIII crew would have been natural additions to Twilight Town or something.
I still have hope she'll show up.
I'm still getting 4, despite 3 being kind of bad. Never been into something extremely nerdy like Final Fantasy, but at least with Kingdom Hearts the characters have arcs.
>Never been into something extremely nerdy like Final Fantasy, but at least with Kingdom Hearts the characters have arcs.
The sheer ignorance of the latter half of this statement showcases the legitimately of the first half.
>the characters have arcs.
Sora becoming more moronic every game isn't an arc
The autistic morons that began pushing the mc as if it was the ultimate shit. I remember them starting all those "sora is better than x character from franchaise that KH visit, just because we see him in KH do things"
That's hilarious in retrospect because KH3 is mostly Sora being a spectator to princess musical numbers and not doing anything for most of the game.
KH1 was so good bros..
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KH1 is the only time Kairi had anything resembling a character and she was in a coma for 75% of the game. It was also the only game I believed Sora, Kairi, and Riku were actually close. The ending was so kino, you can tell KH3 tried capturing the same feeling but it bungled it.
Nah, KH2 had it too, especially at the end. Kairi was still rambunctious; 2 was the source of people wanting to play as her thanks to that keyblade scene. And Session is basically the apex of the Sora/Riku broship, to the point that they did it again in 3D.
For me, it's time travel and garystu villains and suffer porn helpless girl characters #42784321440979
10+ years between 2 and 3
People might pretend otherwise, might talk about how the fact there's fewer side games now is a bad thing, but really? It was this.
You were supposed to play BBS and 3D.
I'm the only person I know who's played all of the games. Even by buddy who grew up with them and played BBS didn't even know DDD existed.
I've played all of them.
I'd have played BBS but I couldn't afford a PSP at the time. I bought a 3DS specifically to play 3D.
>didn't even know DDD existed
I believe it but I also don't understand how that can happen.
The delays and plot. The games after KH2 were generally good but only die-hards engaged with them. Also the plot got a lot dumber by KH 3D. Suddenly we had time-traveling clone ghosts that possessed people. It didn't help that KH3 was underwhelming as hell with a poor selection of worlds.
Don't you get tired of making these threads?
For me Frozen was the only out right bad world in KH3. BH6 was so-so and Pooh was disappointing for only being one room.
It's moronic nonsense people have to ignore to enjoy general Disney crossover. And Disney learned how to do those, better.
>And Disney learned how to do those, better
Where? You better not be talking about Wreck it Ralph 2.
Ever wanted to have Kingdom Hearts games where Sora explores Non Disney worlds?
Didn't that happen in KH1?
I should have been hired as a consultant on the series for my intelligent brain
Donald casting Zettaflare is still hilarious to me
Unbelievably bad pacing in 3, absolutely no stakes at all (revivals), plot occurring backwards in time (mobile games), no payoff at the end of 3/sequel bait, Sora becoming moronic and having no agency in the plot.
Also fans are too old and square enix is a walking corpse. Haven't connected with young people at all, KH2 and FFX are their last great games and that was 20 years ago
Toy Box>The Caribbean>Kingdom of Corona>Monstropolis>San Fransokyo>>>>100 Acre Wood
Might be a bit biased against San Fransokyo cause I didn't like that movie so maybe swap that with Arendelle to be fair
Nothing was worse than Arendelle
I'm a Poohgay so the Pooh world was a shocking disappointment for me. There is no way they were proud of releasing that shit in the state they did. 25 minutes of copy pasted mini games. Yeah Arendelle was terrible but for me it was way better than Pooh
I didn't really count 100 Acre Wood as an actual level
>Arendelle not at the bottom
Main good thing of that level was the kickass final boss
I'd swap Olympus and Toy Box but if I'm being honest I think Olympus is the only truly good world in KH3.
That's because Nomura has a hardon for Hercules and includes it by default for some reason.
The biggest problem is that they didn't have a colosseum in Olympus and instead did those shitty battle gates spread around. Seriously they have it in KH1 then in the Underworld in KH2 but not on fricking Olympus? Would have been the perfect opportunity to have had Safer Sephiroth
>for some reason
Because it's cool. And it thematically represents Sora's desire to be a hero.
Can we agree the gummi stuff in 3 was the best iteration of the system?
OCs took over any important roles that FF/Disney used to have.
what are the chances that lightning from FF will ever appear in one of these?
She would have 100% been in but Nomura decided to retcon ff characters out of existence
Once the third xehanort appeared i just gave up trying to follow the story.
how is it dead?
The third game ending with 'lol we forgif u' after a dozen games setting up that the main villain was an irredeemable monster who literally genocided entire worlds into non-existence. I don't know a single person who was remotely happy with that ending, and most people felt like it was an active insult after everything that happened.
That, and just throwing out all the Square characters, until the DLC dealt with some of them. in a half-assed way. Most of the games up until that point felt like Nomura's vision was the main starting point, but 3 felt like a game designed by committee.
>I don't know a single person who was remotely happy with that ending, and most people felt like it was an active insult after everything that happened.
I got banned from /vg/ for saying this (it was considered "trolling") so unfortunately there are xehanort apologists.
Shitty writing.
>KH3 didn't have pic related in it.
>Kairi was teased to have a major role, or really any role, but ends up doing nothing but still given a secret boss battle where she's actually really fun to play
>Org XIII still exists despite being defeated and now have new backstories and names
>The Disney Villain group disbanded so now it's just Pete and Maleficent looking for a random box instead of Hades, Mother Gothel, Davy Jones, Randall, Zurg/Sid, Callaghan/Yokai, and Prince Hans scheming to steal more princesses or whatever
>Dark Aqua
>Xehanort just fricks off because his old master friend or something but one of the Org members is now the big bad?
>Olympus had Phil being completely silent instead of just giving him a simple text box like the first game
>a new third theme song you waited 10+ years for was ruined by skrillex
>got rid of the cool stained glass princess designs to replace for his OCs
Lightning fricking sucks
You're not going to convince a FF13 fan that Lightning sucks. It's all they have
13-2 was the only good one in the series, and even that's just because the monster summoning was a poor man's Shin Megami Tensei
XIII-2 should have just been Chrono Break. AFAIC the series ended with XIII, which I had a lot of fun with.
Lightniggays are like Carolgays
Based, objectively correct about most things, and the biggest fans of the franchise?
Into armpits.
Zack being incorporated in BBS made me hope that we'd see more incorporated FF characters not restricted to the OC worlds like Traverse Town and Radiant Garden. I was a bit let down by the decision to not have any more FF cameos, and worse see parts of the fan community denigrate the people who were upset about that decision in the first place.
I just want to see Cecil in this series man
Why was Neku/Shiki in DDD then?
>not restricted to OC worlds like Traverse Town
Also that's TWEWY and before KH3 and Nomura's comment about stopping the FF cameos.
In FF7 Rebirth, Gilgamesh has the typical Excalibur/Excalipoor mixup, but he has a move called Sloppy Swordplay that does an unblockable 2000 damage that's represented by two thousand 1s, so he actually learned how to make Excalipoor work.
That game did him so much justice it's unreal. He's a buffoon, but an actual threat that can frick you up just like in FF5.
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>FF7 battle theme is incorporated into Battle on the Big Bridge
Every FF from now on should have its battle theme in his boss music whenever he appears.
If Nomura dies, I 100% expect a reboot. Disney and FF characters? Who the frick knows?
I always thought that Nomura's pro Tifa bias was so obvious when he made Aerith a nothing character and had all of Tifa's cutscenes be about wanting to find Cloud
Darkness! Darkness darkness light Χblade darkness! Darkness light darkness! Darkness darkness darkness!
>No "friends"
Heart!
To a heart seeking water, this water is water, surrounded by water.
Why not light?
I usually absorb what things are about through cultural osmosis, but I still have no fricking clue what the story is in Kingdom Hearts.
sora wants to explore the worlds and save the his star-crossed love and his friends
Have you ever read the Bible? It's kind of like that.
Maybe throw in some Infinite Jest and like five seasons of Pretty Cure as well
Anime Star Wars with Disney characters
If there's one area where Kingdom Hearts disappoints it's giantess art. You'd think that due to the Cinderella giantess scene it would inspire more giantess art in general for Kingdom Hearts but nah. Avatar from Nickelodeon has more giantess art go figure.
Cinderella didn't have a giantess scene, you're thinking of Alice in Wonderland.
I think you play part of Cinderella at the size of a mouse in BBS. Ventus' route?
In Birth by Sleep during Cinderella's world with Ventus he is shrunken down because he entered Cinderella's world by landing on a mouse trap. And for what it's worth Aqua also got shrunken down in Cinderella's world but that one was the Fairy Godmother's magic.
I truly think Nomura has a giantess fetish. Why would he invent the idea that if Sora, Riku, etc go into a world and enter it through a small entry point they end up shrunken down? That's so detailed and specific.
>Don't appear in mouse disguises
>appear in regular anime clothing anyway
Ven didn't get a mouse disguise in Cinderella's world because he doesn't use Sora's style of magic clothes that automatically changes his body.
Oh, Is that how it works? Fairy Godmother magic?
That's the strange thing about Cinderella's world in Birth by Sleep. Of the playable characters who shrunk in there, Aqua gets shrunk by the Fairy Godmother's magic to sneak inside the house of the evil stepmother. But Ventus simply entered the world through a mouse hole into a mouse cage which forced the world itself to shrink him.
Touch grass
Roxas
Frick that homosexual and his mouth-breathing fanbase
I've liked Roxas ever since that cutscene where Xemnas says a bunch of melodramatic shit, and he just goes
>"I meant your name."
Thought I was alone in hating Roxas. And I hate how "inexplicably" super strong he is. He has two keyblades despite only having one heart. And yeah he's inexplicably super strong. Of all boss fights Roxas is the only mandatory boss who has the strongest defense. And when you play as him in KH3 he is TOO powerful. For being half of Sora he is too strong.
Roxas is so strong because he came from Sora and Ventus with a bit of Kairi thrown in.
The Ventus part is important, he's basically 1/n of the Galactus of the KH universe (having been one of a handful of characters who survived the end of the previous one). Some Noah-type shit.
Roxas is fueled by rage, the 2nd most powerful thing in the setting
I love how they gave his armor an asscraxk when the cgi didnt
They used live-action crap like Tron Legacy
What killed the game with 40 releases and several mangas?
KH1 is the most pure story experience as a stand-alone game
KH2 Final Mix is the best game to actually play and the story still isn’t too convoluted by this point. If the series ended here with these two + CoM, it would have been fine.
Everything else, including 3, just kind of exists and just seems to constantly try and reinvent a wheel with needless gimmicks and story padding, instead of just doing the simple story charm of 1 with the gameplay of 2.
And this kind of applies to every big AAA game franchise and not just Kingdom Hearts, but video games take way too long to make now. There were three years between KH1 and 2. There was fourteen years between 2 and 3, and even 5 years since the remake of 2 to 3. Its now 5 years since 3 and 4 is not coming out this year.
It’s going to be harder to keep the buzz going longterm in games when an entire generation passes by between main entries.
Every numbered entry is a stopping point. You, as an individual player, can choose to ignore everything after 1, 2, or 3, and you'll have a complete story and a satisfying gameplay experience. If you move past a number, though, you have to get to the next one to have ANY semblance of closure.
Nomura not knowing when to stop and turning a simple story into a convoluted mess.
>There are actually brainlets ITT who got filtered by a simple JRPG story made for literal children.
they didn't end it with 3.
>The death of handhelds and rise of mobile gaming meaning fans couldn't be tided over with spin-offs you can pick up and finish in a couple sittings, instead you have to deal shitty Gacha slop where important story beats are dragged out across years.
>Disney getting in the way of Nomura's vision after they realized how sucessful Kingdom Hearts was. Hence why 3 felt the most lacking in films+OC cohesion.
>Modern Square Enix just sucks in general.
3 was supposed to be an ending, but it just kept adding sequel hooks and OCs.
I find it funny that Smash uses the english voices instead of the canon Japanese ones.
Both are canon you dipshit
Kingdom Hearts is a dub franchise weeb
KH1 rehashes, lack of new worlds in the spin offs, 3 took way too long, and the story getting convoluted each entry.
Nothing